


for you

by theye



Series: echo chamber [3]
Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Don't copy to another site, F/F, Missing Scene, Rannoch (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 09:39:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19374097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theye/pseuds/theye
Summary: “Shepard, I thought—” Tali started, pulling away just a little and grasping at Shepard's helmet. Shepard let go of her waist and twisted and pulled it out of place; it fell beside the gun on the ground, and then Tali’s cold hands brace her cheeks. “I thought—”





	1. after

**Author's Note:**

> these are technically two separate things set during/immediately after the final priority: rannoch mission, but they're too short to post alone so it's like a double feature

Later, after it all, Tali leans into her side as heavily as she always has, and holds onto her waist in the shuttle. Shepard wants to sit her down and kneel between her knees and let her drape over her shoulders, but if she gives in, she won’t be able to hide how _tired_ she is. There’s elation daring to snake through the Quarian fleet, but intimate grief between Tali and Shepard. James watches them both knowingly, and Javik sits in the passenger seat in silence. Tali takes a deep breath. 

“Everything’s going to change now, isn’t it?” For a moment Shepard doesn’t realize Tali’s opened a comm channel, she’s so tired, and she struggles to find something to say.

“Not really,” Garrus drawls. Naomi exhales. She’s never been a woman of many words, and she doesn’t have the energy to talk it over with Tali just yet, though she knows someday she’ll owe it to her to explain it all, the consensus, the odd _loss_ she feels in Legion’s missing presence. “There’s the war, first, won’t feel much from the trenches. It’ll be different if we win, when you all go home to the same planet. That’s when the real fun starts.”

“When,” James interrupts, suddenly, from the lonely place he sat in, staring at the small comm screen flashing nothing but the alliance logo. “When we win.” He says it like he can’t suffer the alternative, like he can’t bear to think of failure. Naomi understands. She thinks of failure often, and wishes she didn’t have to.

 _I’ll miss Legion,_ Shepard thinks, suddenly, her eyes on the scar lancing James’ face. The first time she’d met James, she’d thought he was too young to be her jailer, and then subsequently she’d thought he was too _warm_ in spite of everything, too willing to ignore how often she woke up screaming and thrashing.  Now he’s one of _hers,_ like Legion was. Like Legion wanted to be, wearing her armor proudly.

“When.” Garrus agrees, sounding far away, and Shepard bites back a rush of affection for him, his soothing voice. It’s so easy to believe him, sometimes. “We won today, Tali. Don’t let that go yet. Always nice when that happens.”

Tali makes a quiet, musing noise, and the weight of her helmet returns to Shepard’s shoulder. James is looking again, watching Shepard shift her jaw to one side, making room, and rubbing her thumb gently over Tali’s suit, just under her ribs and the buckles there. “C’mon, Sparks. You’re gonna be a _legend,_ now. The Admiral who ended the Geth conflict…”

Tali brightens a little. “You think?” She asks, curiously, and Shepard closes her eyes while they debate it, lifts a hand to grip the bar running the length of the shuttle for support, and lets her mind wander.


	2. during

It had been hard won. Shepard can feel the exhaustion creeping in, deeper than her marrow.

Tali collides with her as the light dies from the reaper corpse, hitting her cheek with the hard, cold metal on her helmet. It’s all frantic how Tali grabs and pulls to feel the solidity of Shepard and her armor against the suit, and how Shepard drops the targeting laser into the dust and ghosts her hands around Tali’s hips and side, like she isn’t sure what to do with them.

Dazedly saying her name, dizzily, like a prayer, Shepard plants kisses at the cloth that covers the side of her mask, runs her hands up Tali’s back. Tali lays her head on Naomi’s shoulder as she edges in close; she’d always held onto Naomi like she’s a moss on a tree, pressing herself in against Naomi and clutching up around her back and at her shoulder blades.

Naomi takes a shuddering breath.

“Shepard, I thought—” she starts, pulling away just a little and grasping at Naomi’s helmet. Naomi lets go of her waist and twists and pulls it out of place; it fall beside the gun, and then Tali’s cold hands brace her cheeks. “I thought—”

“Never,” Naomi breathes, running her hand up the curve of Tali’s side, up her arm, covering her where she held Naomi’s face. She’d thought she was going to die too, standing face-to-face and in defiance of an ancient thing a hundred times her size.  She’d watched it step close, bear down on her with that firing chamber, nowhere to run, and all she could do is sum up the energy to go on, point and shoot.

Tali is smiling; Shepard can hear it. She can _feel_ it, the way Tali’s opening and closing her fingers little by little, the way she’s resting the full weight of her head and helmet on Shepard. Her breath still comes heavy and she’s half-wild with adrenaline, but Tali doesn’t seem to mind, her eyes closed and fingers curled into Naomi’s cheeks, clinging to her, keeping her there. Keeping her where Tali can see her and feel her and be sure she’s _alive_.

“I did it for you.” Shepard says, between breaths of air. Rannoch tastes… warm. A little sweet, under the machine smoke and smell of fire. There’s a sea nearby that’s spitting brine into the air. “I promised _._ ”

Tali can’t _breathe,_ Shepard pitches forward and gathers Tali around her ribs, presses her forehead against Tali’s mask. “I did it for _you_.”

She did promise, didn’t she? Bitter and nursing her wounds from another condescending lecture by the Illusive Man, aching and sore in places she’d never ached before and struggling to contain biotics ten times the strength they’d been before she died; she’d sat in the engine core with Tali, face to face, crossed knees to crossed knees. Tali, stuttering like she was blushing while they spoke.

She’d done it more than once. Holding Tali, trembling with her over her father’s burnt corpse. _I’ll bring you home,_ she’d said, fierce and hot, lifting one of her hands to squeeze Tali’s forearm where it was wrapped tightly around her neck. Laying side-by-side in her quarters, Tali half asleep and slurring behind her voice modulator, the aquarium lights dimmed so low that the purple glow was the only little light in the darkness closer than the stars whirring by above them. There was nothing else to say, but she kept _thinking_ about it, Tali holding onto her father’s promise, and now holding onto hers.  

When she pulls away, there’s a smudge of her sweat on Tali’s visor, and with trembling hands she rubs the softest part of her armor against it, her inner arm where one of the layers of flexible cloth she wears peeks between plates, swiping it away. Tali’s eyes close, slow, and then open, and Shepard thinks she could drown in this moment if it just lasted a little longer, face to face.

“I did it for you,” Naomi says, a third time, shell-shocked, staring between the two brights of Tali’s eyes. If it wasn’t impossible, she’d think she could feel Tali’s heartbeat thundering through skin and suit and armor and against her own.

 


End file.
